Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse By Ashley R Pollard

Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse

By Ashley R Pollard

Ashley Pollard is currently from London in the United Kingdom. She is a trained Cognitive Behavioral Therapist (Well this is bound to be interesting.), and received her degree from King's College in 2004. She also has a diploma in Mental Health Nursing from St. Bartholomew's School of Nursing, City University that she earned in 1999 (Wow. St. Barts has a really good reputation if I recall correctly. Good for her!). She worked in the British National Healthcare Service for 21 years. Alongside that, she's also worked as a clerical officer in the civil service, in a bakery, and has written for game magazines as a reviewer and a columnist. Those magazines include Games Master International, as well as freelance work for FASA on their Battletech universe and designing the board game OHMU Warmachine (although I should note that she appears to be credited as Ashley Watkins for those works). She is currently living in London working as a freelance writer and has published several novels and short stories. Bad Dog was published in 2017 by Triode Press (which I currently think is the name of her own self-publishing company because I can't any other books except hers published by them) and distributed by Amazon.

Bad Dog takes place in the ever-closer future year of 2071 in a world very much like our own but with some differences. In the 2030s a series of massive quakes brought the world to its knees causing the US to withdraw from many parts of the world along with many political changes. Including a second American Civil War.  We also know that there was a third world war sometime after 2049 but have no idea who fought it, never mind who won or lost (Huh. Second American Civil War followed by WWIII... Fun Times!{We have to fit everything in bro, there are only 50 years between now and the beginning of the story!}). We have very few if any details but the few we do have present some interesting possibilities. For example, our main character deploys from Confederated States Navy Ship Hornet, the Confederated states don't appear to be the south rising again as they are at least once referred to as the North American Confederated States. This would suggest the formation of a new nation by combining the US and Canada and/or Mexico. However, throughout the book, there seems to be little if any difference between the CS and the US (Maybe a governmental reorganization?). The CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon are still operating, there are still elections with a President being elected. Additionally, the CSMC operates just like the USMC only with more advanced gear. On top of that, our main character is a mixed-race woman who is a Sgt in the Confederated States Marine Corps (Well at least the fascists didn’t win.). Nor is this the only change without a lot of explanation, the People's Republic of China is gone, replaced by the Democratic People's Republic of China. What if anything this means is unexplained as Ms. Pollard maintains a tight focus on the story and doesn't engage in any info-dumping (Well that’s good. Maybe China went full Rojave? Always go Full Rojava.{Yes, because it’s so likely they followed the example of a band of Kurds instead of every other Democratic People’s Republic most famously the one next door. I’ll give you a hint, I don’t think a Rojava China is smuggling nukes into Afghanistan and running powered armor special ops teams} I can dream!). This means there is a lot more space for the character work and plot but it does leave the world-building feeling a bit thin. As if she just changed some names on the stationary to make things feel more science fiction-like. Balanced against this is Ms. Pollard's characterizations so let's talk about our main character, shall we?

Sgt Lara Atsuko Tachikoma is the daughter of a Japanese father and an American mother, a redhead and most importantly the operator of a suit of Marine Corps Powered Armor (Nice). These suits often called Dogs by their operators, act as something in-between heavy infantry and Light Armored Vehicles as they're immune to most small arms fire but can still be destroyed by RPGs and other anti-tank gear. Of course, the color-changing camouflaged armored plates called ChameleonFlage that mimic the surrounding environment make it harder to target the suits. Their suits are strong and heavy enough to carry enough firepower to wipe out battalions of infantry while being light enough to be carried and deployed by aircraft. This, of course, makes them perfect for a covert mission into the mountains of Afghanistan to find out what happened to an Army Special Forces team that has gone missing. The Army Team was investigating a magnetic anomaly found under the mountains for the CIA. Which likely has every veteran in my audience wincing and with good damn reason (It certainly has me wincing, and I never served…). Before I get further into that let me talk about Sgt Tachikoma, as she is our main character and is the viewpoint character for the majority of the novel. I have to admit that Ms. Pollard does a good job writing a Marine here. Sgt Tachikoma is deeply concerned with keeping her squad running at full efficiency and keeping as many people as she can alive in the process. At the same time, she has outside interests and doesn't come across as a one-dimensional meat robot; able to joke around with her fellow NCOs, display emotions, and talks about subjects that aren't military in nature. This is always a good start, I would say to any aspiring science fiction writer who wants to write military people to remember that we are people, not machines. Sgt Tachikoma does have a problem you can't find anywhere but in science fiction however; she keeps reliving the same day and folks it’s a hell of a day to relive over and over. Especially since it keeps killing her (Someone call Tom Cruise. I swear that was the best movie he’s ever done. Mostly because I get to watch him die horribly over and over again.).

Because the Army Team that disappeared? They're all dead, killed by the combined forces of a Chinese Power Armored Special Forces Company and a radical Islamist Afghan Warlord. That magnetic anomaly? A pair of shimmering pillars that might be the key to the advancement of humanity assuming we don't all kill each other over it first. The Chinese forces are willing to collapse the mountain using a nuclear weapon and the Warlord is fully on board with any plan that ends with “and the mountain is sealed forever” as he believes the pillars are an evil force. Considering that most people are locked into immobility when the pillars are activated I can't blame him for feeling that way. However when Sgt Tachikoma (Wait a minute… Tachikoma? Someone is making a Ghost in the Shell reference? {We have a part Japanese woman in a cyberpunk world piloting a powered armor suit, what do you think?}) wakes up after being killed in an ambush and realizes she's right back to where she started, she's gonna have to figure what those pillars actually are, as well as what the Chinese battle plan is exactly and how to win a battle where she has perilously little information about what the other side wants and what is going on. If she doesn't, she will die every time. So the question is, how often can you go to your death over and over before you crack? Ms. Pollard doesn't shy away from the emotional or psychological weight of going through the same events over and over and then dying, only to wake up and know you have to do it all over again. This is good because by examining how such events might turn Sgt Tachikoma into a psychological causality she adds a new dimension to a story that frankly has been done before. The most famous example, Groundhogs Day gives the plot its name but we have seen this is a military context as well in the Japanese story All You Need is Kill and the US film adaptation Edge of Tomorrow. I was also impressed with how Ms. Pollard treated the doctors and support personnel who had to deal with Sgt Tachikoma, having them come across as people who understand that Sgt Tachikoma is clearly under a lot of mental and emotional stress even if they can't understand why she's under such stress. (I mean, she is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist. She would know.)

Another place that Ms. Pollard shines is how she writes the Chinese Military Force and the warlord. Many writers would be content to leave them as faceless beings that serve only as targets for our glorious Marines or mustache-twirling villains. Instead, Ms. Pollard is willing to give them space in the novel and make their case to the reader. While I would have shot Shangwei (A Chinese rank comparable to Captain) Looi Kin-Ming if I ran into him on the other side of the battlefield. I did sympathize with him as he was a man who was simply trying to do his duty to his country as he best understood it. Much like Sgt Tachikoma is a woman trying to do her duty as she best understands it. Even Yeshua Bin Yussuf is somewhat sympathetic here, even though I imagine just about all of us find his ideology rather vile. Yeshua doesn't plot to conquer the world or rub his hand over enslaving American girls. Instead, he is a man who knows he's leading a weaker force that has to play two more powerful forces off each other to achieve his goal of sealing off the mountain from human hands. He is a man who believes that a time is coming that will put all of humanity at great risk and his goal is to reduce the risk while making it easier to create a safe place for his followers to ride out the storm (I mean...yeah.). Even Mr. Anderson the CIA representative who brings in the mission orders is humanized and we're shown a man who doesn't want to send soldiers or marines to their death but is utterly convinced that the pillars under the mountain cannot be left to other hands. He is also willing to risk his career if it means helping Sgt Tachikoma break out of her repeating day (Wait, a CIA agent who is also a human being? I don’t believe you!). Ms. Pollard is able to humanize all sides in this small conflict and do so without any real wasted space. She avoids putting in any mustache-twirling villains or having enemies who engage in vile behavior to make sure the reader knows who to root for. Instead, we're presented a collision of forces all with understandable motivations and goals, while able to leave the reader still pulling for the main character. This displays a fair amount of talent and skill as it would be all to easy to simply declare one side or the other bad and full bad men. The Marine Company that Sgt Tachikoma also gets its fair share of moments meant to give us a view of the people under the uniform as well as reinforce their loyalty to that uniform and what it stands for. Which I appreciated.

Ms. Pollard is able to tell and retell the story of a small unit conflict while retaining the tension and suspense with each retelling. She is also able to present a wide variety of characters and is confident enough to let these characters all speak to the reader in their own voices and let the reader come to their own conclusion from there. While the world-building was frustratingly sparse, it was sacrificed to maintain pace and give more space for characterization. While that won't work for everyone, I'm willing to accept that trade-off if it gives me some decent characters and a good story (So am I generally. People don’t typically infodump in the context of their own world to insiders, so…). Ms. Pollard does this in about 300 pages of planning on the decks of the CSN Hornet and tense battle on and under the mountains of Afghanistan. I was also impressed with her ability to use both USMC terms, ranks and slang as well as use the ranks and terminology of the People's Liberation Army. That said, the book isn't without flaw, besides the sparse world-building the plot itself is willing to leave a lot under-answered and the ending leaves us with a distinct feeling that this was only round one in a large fight. I do think the book could have benefited by focusing more on Sgt Tachikoma's platoon or even just her squad as by trying to juggle her whole company many Marines were left rather shallowly characterized compared to everyone else. I will also note that Ms. Pollard seems to prefer talking about NCOs and officers over the junior enlisted which is a common preoccupation with military science fiction writers. I'm also not crazy about the title, which feels like something from a Japanese light novel. At this rate, we're going to be using paragraphs for titles guys and that defeats the purpose of a title. That said I did enjoy the book a lot and found myself interested in her other works and I would recommend giving this book a try. Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse by Ashley R Pollard gets a B- from me. 

Thus ends our month of military science fiction women writers.  I hope y'all enjoyed it!  If you did and you would like to vote on upcoming reviews or discuss other theme months, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads.  A vote comes with only a dollar a month!  Thank you for being with us and as always Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders